Online casinos offer bonuses to players as incentives to play more. Bonuses are not free money to take home. Unfortunately that is what some players think it to be. This has given rise to the concept of bonus abuse.

In order to ensure that the bonuses were used to wager, the online casinos introduced the concept of wagering requirements. The bonus abusers would then comply with the wagering requirements on online games like blackjack that have very low house edges and not play the games like slots that have much higher house edges. They would then withdraw the bonuses and any winnings they made. Because these games had low house edges most of the bonuses remained intact. The online casinos reacted by insisting that wagering requirements be met only on games like slots or imposed significantly higher wagering requirements for games like blackjack. Some online casinos went one step further. They introduced the concept of sticky bonuses. Sticky bonuses are those in which the player can only withdraw only the winnings and not the bonuses themselves. After fulfilling the wagering requirements the bonuses given are withdrawn from the players’ accounts by the casino. Sticky bonuses come with lower wagering requirements as compensation.

Today the welcome bonus is the target of most bonus abusers. Not only is it the largest bonus but also requires only a deposit to be made from the player. The most common way for abusing the welcome bonus is by signing up at the same online casino again and again under different names. This has resulted in the casino taking stringent actions to prevent this bonus abuse. Up front the online casinos allow only one person to register from a given household and therefore the bonus is available to only one person in the household. This prevents the wife from availing of the bonus if the husband has already done so. The online casinos have also stepped up the identity verification checks and are asking for proofs of names and addresses. The casino software has been strengthened so as to match the names, addresses and credit card numbers for duplication and this enables them to nab the bonus abuser.

In this exercise the honest players suffer. Online casinos do not offer bonuses to some countries that have had high incidence of bonus abusers. The honest players from those countries are therefore ineligible for bonuses. Of late some online casino software providers have evolved a system of bonus that seems to be fair to both online casinos and online players. One such system is Microgaming’s Clearplay bonus system. This system works on a calculated expected value or EV of a bonus. If the winnings are cashed early, of if wagering requirements are made with small bets or if wagering requirements are made on games with low house edges then the EV of the bonus decreases drastically and the player may be left with nothing. But if the player does the opposite then the EV of the bonus increases.

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